Alari, Queen of Gallagrin and Supreme Protector of the Divine Throne of Highcrest, wandered through her southern gardens trailing her fingers along the barbed vines which would burst into a riot of color and rich scents within a few weeks.

“I thought you were going to burn these things to the ground?” Dae, her Knight and dearest love, said.

“I tried,” Alari said, drawing her hand back slowly, before the hungry thorns could claim a drop of royal blood from her fingers. “The screams were a little much though.”

“Screams?” Dae asked. Her hand strayed to the ceremonial sword she wore at her waist. Alari’s Knight wasn’t a superstitious sort, but no one could discount that Castle Highcrest was haunted, especially in the wake of the Butcher King’s residence. Dae didn’t fear ghosts, but she was ever so slightly over protective of her liege.

“It turns out that the legends are true,” Alari said, walking to a thick cord of interwoven dark and pale green strands. On the vine’s tiny branches the first hints of brilliant buds, from an almost white pastel orange at the top of the vine to dark and vibrant dots of red on the branches at the vine’s base, were beginning to peek forth from their winter slumber. “This garden was watered in the blood of thousands during my father’s reign. The plants drank up the reddened soil and should have withered but instead they changed. They’re quiet now, still asleep, but in the  spring and summer and fall they sing.”

“Your south garden is full of blood drinking plants?” Dae asked. “That sing?”

“Yes,” Alari said. “Hundreds of different songs. I thought they would all be dirges and laments, but it turns out those are few and far between.”

“And they scream too?” Dae asked.

“Only if you burn them,” Alari said. “Or uproot them. And it’s not just one of them. Pull up a single rose and all of the rest scream.”

“So they’re lovely and disturbing,” Dae said. “I see why you kept them.”

“The amusing thing is that they never sang for my father,” Alari said.

“I seem to recall them moaning a lot,” Dae said. “We scared ourselves silly the first time we snuck in here.”

“To be fair, I was scared silly,” Alari said. “You had a look on your face that said you were ready to chop them to kindling. It looked almost exactly like the one you’re wearing now.”

“I’m not wearing an expression now,” Dae said. “This is how I normally look.”

“Yes, like you’re ready to chop something or someone to kindling,” Alari said.

“Not ready,” Dae said. “Just willing to, if need be.”

Alari laughed lightly and swept away from her knight to inspect another of the plants; a low and long shrub with the early signs of white and blue blossoms. It had been sculpted to look a series of stylized ocean waves but the rampant overgrowth after the chaos of the previous autumn left the waves looking more naturalistic and powerful than the designer might have intended. Alari had no intention of allowing anyone to change the shrubs appearance back to the original design though.

“You are a dangerous person to have around, my Adae,” Alari said.

“Yes,” Dae said. “I just hope your enemies are aware of that.”

“You are dangerous because my enemies are aware of that,” Alari said. “They’ll come for you next, before they come for me.”

Dae flexed her hands and cracked her knuckles.

“That sounds delightful to me,” she said.

Alari sighed and looked away, caressing the shrub and letting its tiny spurs dig into the palm of her hand.

“That’s the one order I can’t give you, isn’t it?” Alari asked.

“What?” Dae asked, walking up to her queen and touching Alari lightly on the shoulder.

“I can’t order you to protect yourself before me,” Alari said. “Or from me.”

“My queen,” Dae said. “As your knight, I can never put you anywhere except first before all others, most definitely including myself.”

“But…” Alari began before Dae cut her off.

“And even if I wasn’t your knight,” Dae said. “I can’t risk losing you. It’s greedy, and it’s selfish, and I don’t care. In protecting you, I’m protecting myself too. You saw the state I fell into when we were apart, and that was when I could cling to the hope that you were doing fine without me. There is so much farther down I could go if you were lost for real.”

“Don’t,” Alari said. “Let me at least command you there. You don’t get to be the only one who’s selfish and greedy. I have to think of the whole kingdom in every other choice I make, give me at least this; if I fall, if I’m lost, do not follow me down. I don’t care if this isn’t fair to ask of you, but if I die, you have to live. And live well.”

“You are truly cruel, you know that don’t you?” Dae asked. “Dying for you is such a simple proposition. Living is complicated, and if I’m going to do that, I insist that I not have to do it alone.”

“I have plans to die when the reaper has lost count of the winters I’ve seen,” Alari said. “I envision being asleep in a comfy bed in a far away cabin, while the successor of my successor’s successor rules the kingdom with peace and prosperity for all.”

“I can allow that,” Dae said. “Provided I am in the cabin to fight the reaper when they arrive.”

Alari rolled her eyes and laughed.

“Well enough, my knight,” she said. “I shall hold you to that promise at least then. As we come upon dire hours where hope seems lost, you will remember the goodly cottage we shall build in our age and infirmity, and remember that you are bound to this life until our bones can rest together there.”

“You are a wise queen, my lady,” Dae said. “That is a promise I can bind myself to freely and without reservation.”

“Good,” Alari said, quiet and serious for a moment. “Though, would you say the same if I asked you as myself, rather than commanded it as your queen?”

“Alari,” Dae said, “You have always been more than my princess, and more than my queen. I am bound to you by more than duty, and more than rank, and more than any promise you could ever ask of me. You are Gallagrin’s Queen, and are owned in part by all it’s people, but while my mind knows that, in my greedy heart, we are still young and the cares of the kingdom are far away and your are mine and I am yours.”

“I’m not worthy of you, my Adae,” Alari said. “You give me so much of yourself and I can only give you the parts of me which Gallagrin has not already stolen away.”

“Gallagrin has taken nothing from you that matters,” Dae said. “I know there are parts of your life that I can never share, burdens which I can never help you carry, commitments that must come first before me.  Those don’t matter though. They’ve never mattered. They’re a part of what it means to be in your life, and I accepted that a long time ago. You are worth that price.”

“And now who is the cruel one?” Alari asked, wiping a tear from her eye.

“You,” Dae said. “Definitely you. Because I know you’re going to ask me to do something terrible next.”

“It’s not terrible,” Alari said. “Or at least not physically painful. But before I get to that, tell me of the new candidate you’ve found?”

“I cannot express how much ‘not physically painful’ is failing to reassure me,” Dae said. “So, yes, let’s talk about Lady Lafli.”

“This is Jyl, not Jain, correct?” Alari asked.

“You know your noble families better than I remember,” Dae said.

“A necessary evil of ruling them,” Alari said. “Minor families have the same basic needs as major ones and can be a stronger base if they’re united.”

“You always did like having more chess pieces on the board didn’t you?” Dae asked.

“It’s the easiest way to win,” Alari said.

“Unless your opponent notices that you have seven rooks in play,” Dae said.

“I only used that gambit once,” Alari said. “It turns out pawns are much harder for your opponent to keep track of.”

“Jyl is definitely not a pawn,” Dae said. “She earned her Pact Spirit the hard way.”

“Stole it from another family?” Alari asked.

“No,” Dae said. “She quested for it. Found one of the old ruins, ventured in deeper than anyone else had gone before and woke the spirit that was sleeping there.”

“With a young spirit her powers must be significantly limited,” Alari said.

“They should be, but that’s not what I’ve observed so far,” Dae said. “It’s possible that either the spirit has had previous bearers before it dropped into slumber, or that she’s a prodigy with working magic. Or, and this is my guess, both are the case.”

“You were looking for more than just skill and power though I believe,” Alari said, resuming her walk through the garden.

“Yes, and that’s why I want her as part of your guard,” Dae said. “Her thoughts are slippery and sneaky. She’s not concerned about winning so much as achieving her objectives.”

“That seems a rather fine distinction to draw,” Alari said.

“It’s the difference between trying to score a point and making sure if you wind up on the ground that you’re foe goes down too,” Dae said. Alari’s pace was a relaxing one, designed to draw out their time alone together as long it could reasonably be stretched. In theory, since they were in a secure location, Dae should have walked several paces behind her queen, but Alari had disallowed that sort of nonsense since the first day they met. Instead, the two women walked side by side, each dutifully not staring at the other.

“You wish my personal guard to prioritize defeating my foes by any means necessary rather than performing their duties to the technical limit of what is required of them?” Alari asked.

“That’s the general idea,” Dae said, and then winced. “And I am going to regret saying that before this conversation is over aren’t I?”

“I could lie if that would calm your nerves?” Alari said.

“Please do,” Dae said.

“Alas, to you, I will never lie, my Knight,” Alari said.

“You are fortunate that I love you so dearly, my Queen,” Dae said. “So much that I would never imagine mixing Inchesso Mudbloom into the royal hair tonics.”

“I thought it was your duty to protect my body from all forms of harm?” Alari asked.

“Indeed it is, dear liege,” Dae said. “But who can say that you wouldn’t appear most fetching with blue and green streaks in the royal mane?”

“I believe I know who shall be testing the royal tonics before I next use them,” Alari said.

“As you command, Your Majesty,” Dae said, bowing low with a delighted grin on her face.

“You are a wicked knight,” Alari said.

“Yes,” Dae said. “Every bit as wicked as you need me to be.”

“Then perhaps you’ll enjoy what I have to ask you,” Alari said. “I need someone to infiltrate Paxmer. And it needs to be someone of unparalleled skill whom I can trust with more than my life.”

“I hate the idea of being parted from you,” Dae said. “It worked out rather poorly the last time we tried it seven years ago, but if it means eliminating a threat to you before it can cross into Gallagrin in the first place, you need only name the target.”

“It’s not that simple,” Alari said.

Dae sighed.

“It never is, is it?” she said.

“I’m going to destroy Paxmer,” Alari said, without breaking her stride or placing any more emphasis on the words than if she’d announced what she was going to have for breakfast.

“That’s understandable,” Dae said. “Am I to start slaying them from a particular point in the country or shall I begin with the largest obstacles and work down from there?”

“Your blade has shed all of the Paxmer blood I need it to,” Alari said. “And for this mission, you will need more than Kirios for support.”

“Kirios and I can do quite a lot together,” Dae said.

“Yes, including save my kingdom and my position in it,” Alari said. “But this venture will require more than one of the Queen’s Guard.”

“Jyl is untrained,” Dae said. “She’ll learn fast, but I don’t think she’ll be able to handle more than a tenth of Paxmer or so on her own.”

“It is fortunate then that I have another candidate for you to review for the Queen’s Guard,” Alari said.

“Who?” Dae asked. “I thought I saw all of the candidates for the Royal Guard this year?”

“You did,” Alari said. “The person I speak of is Mayleena Telli.”

Dae stopped short, and shook her head to make sure she’d heard Alari correctly.

“The Duchess of Tel?” she asked. “Duke Telli’s daughter?”

“She still refuses her title,” Alari said. “But she has sworn her allegiance to me directly.”

“What took her so long?” Dae asked. “I thought we were going to have to root her out of Elinspire with a team of wild horses.”

“I doubt very much the horses would have come away from the encounter in a serviceable state,” Alari said.

“Why will I need her help?” Dae asked.

“Because you will need at least two ladies in waiting,” Alari said. “Any less than that and it will seem suspicious when you call upon your mother in Paxmer.”

Jyl Lafli wasn’t supposed to have a Pact Spirit. She knew that. Her family knew that. Everyone who’d ever met her knew that.

The Lafli family were minor nobles, more honored army captains than true nobility. As such, they were entitled to bear arms for the crown and rely on the crown’s funds to support them in a lifestyle which would be considered lavish for a peasant but only barely adequate for true nobility.

Families like the Lafli’s weren’t uncommon in Gallagrin. Between the threats of border fighting that had gone on since the formation of Gallagrin and the various non-sapient monsters that lurked within the dark corners of the kingdom there was always the need for a plentiful supply of soldiers and skilled captains. Good fighters could demand high pay for the work they did but Gallagrin found it useful to offset some of that expense with the social prestige and privilege that came with a noble title.

The Lafli’s had been as pleased with the arrangement as any other family. There were things which gold alone could not buy one access too after all, and like many of the lesser families the Lafli’s had seen their title as the stepping stone to consolidation with a larger, more influential family through marriage or treaty.

Those dreams had come crashing to earth with the coronation of Alari, the Red Handed Queen because, like many others, the Lafli’s had aligned themselves with the wrong faction in the civil war.

In their defense, in the early days of Alari’s revolt against her father, her cause had seemed like a dangerous gamble at best. King Sathe held ancient power at his fingertips both in the Pact Spirit of Gallagrin and in the defense of Highcrest. Those advantages were layered on top of a strong reserve of Royal troops and the armies of many of the country’s noble houses. Viewed with a coldly analytical eye, the Lafli’s could be forgiven for siding with the known power of the legitimately crowned King of Gallagrin.

And so they were. One of Alari’s first acts as Queen was a review of those who had sided with her father during the war. Most of her enemies were granted pardons or forgiven their misplaced loyalties. Alari had inherited a realm divided and painted in deep shades of kin-shed blood. Healing the wounds that she had helped cause, and lancing out the truly depraved malignancies that had grown in the course of her father’s reign had been the focus of Alari’s early years as queen.

It was work that ongoing as well, though some forgivenesses came slower than others.

In Jyl’s case, the Lafli family had been reinstated to their traditional position, but requests for new Pact Spirits had been stonewalled. There were fewer available in the wake of the war when so many had geared up for combat. Those men and women who’d taken on full or partial pact bindings had settled into quieter lives, but the spirits they were bound to were with them for the rest of their lives.

Neither Jyl nor her twin sister Jain were even interviewed to become Pact Warriors. As scions of a lesser house, they would have normally held the right to compete for a full Pact Spirit binding. The families who had allied with Princess Alari in the civil war were given priority though and in the time of shortage that meant few of those who didn’t stand with her were granted the opportunity to advance.

Jyl had looked at her position and seen that she was destined to be part of a generation which fell behind. It wasn’t fair, but she’d also seen, even as a young girl, what life under the Butcher King had been like. From the partial understanding she had as a child and the stories she collected as an adult, she couldn’t fault the Queen for her actions. Gallagrin had been injured by the civil war. There were great pains which the country was in the process of healing, and that healing had come at great price, both to Gallagrin and to Jyl’s family, but it had been worth it.

That wasn’t a popular opinion to hold in the Lafli family. Jyl’s two eldest uncles and six of her cousins had perished in the war. Jyl didn’t see that as Queen Alari’s fault. It had been her grandfather’s decision to openly support King Sathe in an attempt to wedge the family deeper into the King’s good graces.

Once upon a time, she’d hated her grandfather for that decision. That had been an easy path to take when her mother returned home from the first campaign of the war with horror stories of the manner in which the King’s forces were made to fight.

Her mother had refused to return to battle and had been disowned from the family for cowardice but in Jyl’s eyes no braver woman had ever lived.

That was why she’d refused to give up when she grew old enough to call for a pact bonding.

The noble families of Gallagrin held the runic stones on which were inscribed the true names of the Pact Spirits that were passed down from generation to generation. Those were not the only Pact Spirits one could call upon though. When the Sleeping Gods walked the earth they crafted many spirits and set them to many tasks. Once those tasks were completed, the spirits either returned to the god who formed them, or fell into a slumber of their own, usually within something they were invested in.

With no ancestral Pact Spirit to call her own, Jyl had been required to forge her destiny and seek out one on her own. All the work that had gone into that though, all the trials she’d overcome and in the end she’d failed anyways.

“You didn’t fail,” Daelynne Akorli said, throwing a dry towel to the small, sweat covered girl.

“I didn’t make it to the top,” Jyl said, wiping her face dry and uttering a silent prayer that her workout had left her flushed. Standing before the Queen’s Knight, the daughter of the Lafli family felt every bit as insignificant as she’d ever imagined herself to be. Being able to hide her embarrassment behind her labored breathing was an unexpected mercy on a trip that had seen her hopes crushed under the weight of her own inadequacy.

“The test wasn’t to get to the top of the mountain,” the Queen’s Knight said. “I was looking for something else there. Can you tell me what that was?”

Jyl hid her face in the towel for a moment to buy herself time to think.

They’d been tasked to climb a mountain without the use of their Pact Spirits. So it was a test of their bodies, rather than their mystical might. Except the Queen’s Knight was saying that she hadn’t failed. So not her body then, which she knew to be woefully unprepared for the task, but perhaps her spirit?

“You wanted to see if we would give up?” Jyl asked.

“I wanted to see a lot of things. That was one of them. What else though?”

Jyl tried to remember the climb. The long, brutal climb. What had it shown about the applicants?

“If we would cheat, if we could take orders,” Jyl said working through the question as she spoke. “You wanted to see how we would approach an obstacle like that. One that we weren’t trained for.”

“Yeah, you didn’t fail at all,” the Queen’s Knight said.

“But I gave up,” Jyl said. “Before the storm.”

“Let’s talk about that. Why were you climbing after the storm?”

“I hadn’t reached the top yet,” Jyl said. “I was hoping if I continued on I wouldn’t be too late, but then you and the others came down first.”

“And why did you turn back?”

“The storm was too close,” Jyl said. “I knew I wasn’t going to make it and I didn’t want anyone to have to risk themselves rescuing me.”

“Flying’s pretty fun too isn’t it?” The Queen’s Knight handed Jyl a canteen filled with a sweet and slightly salty beverage.

“I’m not very good with it,” Jyl said, draining the canteen. She was thirstier than she’d noticed, which wasn’t necessarily a good sign. Checking in with her pact spirit, Jyl saw that her companion was feeding her a slow trickle of magic to ward off the effects of mild dehydration.

“You reached the base camp and didn’t break any bones. Somedays that’s good enough.”

“It’s difficult to practice with,” Jyl said, finding it easier to talk about the intricacies pact magic with the legendary Knight than about personal matters, especially personal failings. “It takes so much magic to power the wings that it’s hard to have any left for control.”

“I can give you some pointers on that,” the Lady Akorli said. “The most basic trick is to use the air around you rather than fight with it.”

“Thank you,” Jyl said. “I’ll probably need to go back to my family in a few days though won’t I?”

“That all depends,” Dae said and took her cloak off. “Want to go a round?”

“With you?” Jyl asked, coughing in surprise.

“Yeah, light sparring,” Dae said. “We don’t have to count points, I’m just curious about something.”

Jyl’s mind went fuzzy for a moment, but her mouth blessedly worked on its own.

“Yes! Certainly!” she said.

The two women stepped into one of the open sparring circles and a crowd began to gather to watch them. This did nothing to alleviate Jyl’s nervousness but at least when she got her butt handed to her no one was going to say it was because she was weak.

All I have to do is last till the end of the round, she told herself, knowing that even a simple action like that would win her back the respect that her trick on the mountain had cost her.

“When you’re ready,” Dae said and in the blink of an eye the Queen’s Knight was garbed in a set of basic grey steel armor, fitting for a senior guardsman perhaps.

Sharply aware that she had to make the most of the time given to her, Jyl followed suit and transformed in a blink into the strongest, fastest armor she could conjure forth.

Dae offered a cheerful salute, and assumed a basic ready stance with her sword held in front of her.

Jyl knew an instructor’s invitation to begin a battle when she saw one. She’d trained too long in various fighting arts under her mother’s tutelage to miss either the opening that was provided or the various traps for the unwary who tried for too aggressive an offense.

When she was a young girl, Jyl had tried any number of wild and unpredictable openings but time and experience had taught her that, against a more experienced foe, wild opening attacks translated to wildly unpredictable gaps in her defense which her foe was better able to see than she was.

Her initial attack therefore was a probing series of blows. The first few lacked commitment and served to simply ask how aggressive the Queen’s Knight intended to be. If Dae had answered them with a blistering offense, Jyl was in her best position to fall back and parry any blows that were sent towards her.

Dae’s response was measured though. She had the height and reach advantage on her foe and wasn’t going to be drawn into over committing herself easily.

With every nerve singing with excitement, Jyl stepped up the pace of the battle. Her armor was focused on granting her speed over strength, but she was small enough that even the mild improvement of her physique allowed her to project force that seemed out of place with her stature.

Dae wasn’t fooled by the size disparity though. Any experienced Pact fighter was used to discounting their opponents appearance when it came to evaluating their capabilities. Despite that though, Jyl’s speed did take Dae off guard.

Pressing her advantage, the smaller fighter stepped in quickly and bound Dae’s sword arm in a grapple. Jyl wasn’t able to hold the grapple longer than a second, but that was enough time to get in a long slash across Dae’s back and a stab into the armor of Dae’s upper arm.

Neither attack penetrated Dae’s armor, but Jyl felt wildly ecstatic that she’d managed to land the blows at all.

Her delight turned to terror as she saw that she’d left herself open for a takedown to the floor and that Dae looked to have every intention of driving her into the earth.

Jyl rolled at the last fraction of a second, taking Dae down with her but managing to ensure that they landed on the ground side by side.

A whistle blew, signaling the end of the round and Jyl danced up to her feet breathless and blown away by the struggle. She’d expected to be unconscious, or at least knocked out of the ring and instead she’d landed two blows and escaped a grapple. She wasn’t certain but she thought that if she died that very moment, she’d leave a very happy ghost behind.

Then it got better.

“I was going to offer you a job, but after that display it’s not an offer anymore,” Dae said. “Pack your things, you’re coming to work with me.”

Of the many meeting rooms and presentations halls and audience chambers in the grand castle of Highcrest, Dae had never foreseen herself sitting in the Memory Room. With the everburning pyre of divine fire that sat in the center of the room, it was easy to believe the legends that claimed no lies could be uttered by those seated at the spirit-etched central table that ringed the heavenly bonfire.

The Memory Room was, again according to legend, where the Gallagrin’s Spirit Intercessor was entombed. When the Sleeping Gods fell into their great (and presumably eternal) slumber, the auxiliary spirits which they maintained largely fell into the godsleep with them. The Spirit Intercessor had once been the one who communicated with Gallagrin’s ruler on whatever divine matters the crown was meant to pursue.

In the centuries since the Intercessor went down to slumber in the earth, the room where they were spoken too had become one of the highest level planning rooms in the castle. The myth that no lies could be told in the Intercessor’s presence was less believed to be a magical geas and more a warning that was best heeded by anyone who didn’t wish to invoke the Intercessor’s wrath.

“Thank you for joining us today,” Alari said, addressing the four men and women she’d assembled for what Dae thought of as a pre-War Council.

“We are a surprisingly small group, Your Majesty,” General Karlin Limli said. “With the immanence of spring, I thought you might be inclined to summon the full council to discuss the possibility of an early campaign?”

Dae steepled her hand in front of her mouth to cover a smile. Karlin was as delightfully direct as Alari had warned Dae he would be. That directness was clearly attributable to his position.He was the senior commander of the Southern Royal Armies, the same Southern Royal Armies which had endured the worst of the fighting with Paxmer six years previously and on earlier occasions during the Butcher King’s reign. Karlin hadn’t been the commander of the crown’s southern forces until after Alari took the throne, but he’d still been shaped by the pressure of holding Gallagrin’s most vulnerable border despite the lack of overt attacks on it during his tenure.

“Just the reverse General,” Alari said. “We do not wish to wage either an early campaign or a late one this year.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Karlin said, “but I don’t believe Paxmer is going to allow you a choice in that matter.”

“Paxmer can’t do anything to us,” Admiral Yonda Kemere said. “Not on land at least.”

As the senior commander for the Gallagrin navy, Yonda’s dismissal of land-based threats was as common as it was understandable.

“That’s not what our spies are telling us,” Karlin said. “Paxmer’s been building up stockpiles of weapons and armor for years.”

“You didn’t need spies to tell you that,” Yonda said. “Just ask anyone in one of my ships. We’re the ones those weapons are getting used on!”

“Bah, you just run away on the wind,” Karlin said. “That’s not an option when you’ve got an army in front of you and your house behind you.”

“Paxmer is a threat,” Alari said. “We acknowledge that and grant both of you your concerns. It is still our desire that no formal levy of royal or noble troops be made this coming season.”

“If you acknowledge the threat, you must act on it Your Majesty,” Karlin said. “If we leave Paxmer the option of taking the initiative we’ll lose every keep, fort, and border town that we have along our entire southern expanse.”

“That sounds bad, but I’m sorry to say that the Navy’s needs are more dire than that,” Yonda said. “You’ve seen the reports haven’t you Your Majesty? We’re not facing wood and steel on the waves any longer.”

“What do you mean?” Karlin asked. “Has Paxmer put new ships into the sea?”

“No,” Alari said. “They’re simply crewing their existing ships with new weapons.”

“We face dragons on the borders Your Majesty,” Karlin said. “Whatever they’re throwing at the navy, it can’t be as bad as that.”

“It can be exactly as bad as that,” Sir Faen Kemoral, the commander of the Royal Guard, said. The Royal Guard were, essentially, one of the Royal Armies but their command structure reported directly to the crown rather than to a General and while the Royal Guard’s charter called for them to secure the capital and provide for the defense of the royal city, history had stretched the definition of the areas they were allowed to work in to include acting as special supplementary troops in any area where danger might arise that could threaten the crown.

“What’s as bad as a dragon?” Karlin asked.

“Another dragon,” Yonda said. “That’s what they’ve been sending against us!”

“I can confirm that,” Faen said. “I’ve lost a full squad and a half trying to safeguard shipments sent from the Sunlost Isles.”

“Those squads were on only two of the seven ships which have been sunk in the last three months,” Yonda said. “We can’t run away on the wind when we’ve got dragons in front of us and slow moving cargo ships sailing in our wake.”

“How are they getting dragons out onto the water?” Karlin asked. “That’s impossible. Paxmer dragons can only live in Paxmer.”

“We have tasked some of our scholars to answer that question,” Alari said. “Their belief is that so long as the ships remain under Paxmer control, the vessel counts as ‘Paxmer territory’ and thus the dragons can abide there.”

“That’s an enormous risk though,” Karlin said. “And dragons aren’t risk taking creatures.”

“The ones that live to an old age aren’t,” Yonda said. “These are young ones though.”

“That’s a poor turn of fortune then.” Karlin said. “But I am still unclear on why we’ve been assembled here?”

“Gallagrin faces many problems,” Alari said. “The threat of invasion is real, although the form it will take is likely not the one we are familiar with. The challenge to our claim on the sea is real, and the solution to it is one which does not present itself readily. You are not hear to discuss Gallagrin’s problems though. You are here to discuss the solutions to Gallagrin’s problems.”

“The solution I recommend is an early assault into Paxmer territory,” Karlin said. “If we strike deep and hard, we can force their hand and make them play out the campaign seasons of the year in response to us. If we make them focus on mitigating the damage we’re doing, we can keep them from having the time or resources to do damage to us in return.”

“That is a tried and tested strategy,” Alari said. “But it falls short for our needs on this occasion. Firstly because it requires too great a commitment of forces, forces which we do not have and cannot raise without doing material harm to the Duchys of the south.”

“The crown has imposed troop levies on the populace since the first time it was worn,” Karlin said.

“Troops levied for defensive battles enjoy the benefits which Gallagrin provides us,” Alari said. “We are not an easy country to assault. Soldiers fed into the plains of Paxmer will not be sheltered by our mountains, or protected by the creatures with which we hold unspoken truces. But there is another reason an assault on Paxmer will fail.”

“The troops would be green,” Karlin said. “I know the limitation of our forces but I ask that you have faith in our people. It may cost them, but they can see a campaign such as this through to the end.”

“It will be a bitter end for all if we allow them to go,” Alari said. “Even should they return home in victory, there would be no food awaiting them.”

“No food?” Karlin asked. “But the restoration of the farmlands has been the crown’s primary concern since your rule began. How can the farmers still be lagging at their work?”

“They are not,” Alari said. “Our fields are restored and produced full crops last year.”

“They must have,” Yonda said. “We shipped more goods in the fall than we have in years.”

“And therein lies the problem,” Alari said. “In his bid for the throne, Halrek needed a war chest. Those funds came from authorizing the sale of not only our storable crops last year but also the future sale of the crops this year promises to produce.”

“That’s insane,” Karlin said. “Why should we be bound by the actions of that lunatic?”

“Because he accepted payment for the crops from Senkin, Sunlost, Inchesso and Authzang. Payment which we have as yet failed to locate,” Alari said.

“Can we deliver the crops and not starve if the farmers remain on their land?” Faen asked.

“Our advisors believe so,” Alari said. “Halrek was borrowing from the future, not seeking to destroy it.”

“And if we renege on the contract?” Karlin asked.

“In the worst case, we’ll be facing invasion from more than just Paxmer,” Alari said. “A more likely course however would be that Paxmer’s campaign against us would gain the support of the countries with whom we broke faith.”

“So either we face an invasion with too few troops or we face several invasions with troops who will starve at the end of the fighting?” Karlin asked. “That does not paint a picture which offers many solutions, Your Majesty.”

“It sounds like my request for larger squads of marines is not one you’re willing to entertain either?” Yonda asked.

“In the face of dragon fire, more troops do not strike us as a workable answer,” Alari said. “Neither is abandoning our place on the waves though. There is too much we cannot produce within our borders and too few fair markets across our neighbor’s borders.”

“It sounds as though you want it all, Your Majesty,” Faen said. “A secure country, prosperous citizens and good relations with those we border.”

“You are correct Sir Kemoral,” Alari said.

“But not with Paxmer. certainly?” Karlin asked.

“With Paxmer, we will be on the best of terms,” Alari said. “But it will not be the Paxmer which stands today.”

“I do not take your meaning, You Majesty?” Karlin said.

“Then allow us to be clear,” Alari said. “Paxmer invaded our country. They violated  the sanctity of our realm, our person, and our holy trust. We do not forgive them for this.”

Dae wasn’t certain, but she thought the eternal flame burning at the center of the room flared steadily brighter as Alari spoke.

“Paxmer thinks they want a war with us,” Alari said. “They think they can weaken us with their stratagems and then march their troops in to claim dominion over our realm. They are patient and cunning and, given time, they would be correct.”

Dae flicked her gaze from Alari to the eternal flame and saw that she was correct. It was glowing ever brighter the more the Queen of Gallagrin spoke.

“That is why we will not give them time,” Alari said.

The light from the eternal flame was mirrored in by the white elements of the royal regalia to the point where Alari was surrounded by a nimbus of faint light.

“We will wage no early or late campaign against Paxmer this season,” Alari said. “What we will do to Paxmer will be no sort of campaign at all. We are going to destroy our enemy utterly. Paxmer called us to war six years ago and set the terms as a battle of subterfuge and betrayal.”

In the eternal flame, Dae saw the shape of a figure starting to form, as though the fire were a messenger recording a royal proclamation.

“We accept those terms,” Alari said. “If Paxmer wishes to see how far the Red Handed Queen will go to secure her realm then we will be glad to educate them as we educated our father on that matter.”

Queen Haldri Paxmer escorted her guests into an interrogation chamber the size of gladiatorial arena.

“We afford you a rare honor today,” Haldri said to her three visitors from Gallagrin. “It is not often that we take a personal hand in the dispensation of our court’s justice.”

In the center of the grand, dark stone room, a man lay strapped to an inclined table. To his left, a pit of coals glowed bright orange. Various implements were heating in the fire, but from the burns on the man’s body it looks as though he was already well acquainted with them.

“And what has this poor wretch done to deserve your royal attention?” Baron Gedli asked.

The Baron was a simple man. He aspired to be a wise commander, but his wisdom was born out of fear. He feared for his family. He feared for the people he commanded and the people he was sworn to protect. He feared for them so much that he walked willingly into the stronghold of his enemy and offered his surrender without ever being aware of what he was doing.

It helped sustain his delusion that he was entering into a peaceful covenant with Paxmer rather than betraying Gallagrin when Haldri invited him to attend her as an honored guest rather than demanding his supplication and surrender in the face of her undeniable might. The truth was that both parties knew the fate which awaited Gedli’s garrison keep on the day when Paxmer found it expedient to move against Gallagrin in force. Since the Baron was capable of swallowing wildly blatant lies however, Haldri felt the need to impress upon him in a visceral manner what happened to those who invoked her wrath.

The man strapped to the table, the bandit who had earned the queen’s displeasure, didn’t move or react as the interrogation party drew near, but his labored breathing gave away the fact that he was still alive. Haldri made a note to have her Chief Interrogator brought up for review. The prisoner’s case had been escalated to her attention but there was still basic work that could have been done on him. Even a cursory glance revealed that the subject still possessed all of his digits and that suggested other techniques had been abbreviated or skipped entirely.

Haldri expected better workmanship when it came to dealing with those who gave offense to her or her realm than what she saw before her. She could grant that her method of interrogation was more certain than anything the Chief Interrogator could manage but her time was too precious to be squandered on cleaning up his half performed duties.

“This one was accused of banditry,” Haldri said, drawing a red hot poker from the fire beside the man. It had been used but only sparingly so far, as though that were some form of mercy?

“I take it you don’t have many bandits in Paxmer?” Master Merrin Quick asked. As the head of a Gallagrin-based transportation guild, Merrin was drawn to focus on the elements in Paxmer that could impact the safety or viability of moving goods through the country. Particularly, goods that were illicit in Gallagrin. Haldri smiled at that. Of the queen’s three guests, Merrin was the most blatantly mercenary. It was refreshing. The woman had levers to pull, and she didn’t try to hide them. Instead she put a price tag on each one and made no attempt at pretending to be anything except what she was.

“You will find our highways and tolls free of the perils which plague your country’s thoroughfares,” Haldri said. “The harshness of the punishments we inflict serve as a shield to all of those who abide by our rule.”

“And yet you don’t make a spectacle of the punishment?” Duchess Sanli asked. She watched the Paxmer queen with unfeigned interest. Haldri saw in Sanli’s eyes a hunger for the sort of definitive power which a queen wielded. Sanli was, from everything Haldri could see, a kindred soul. The two of them, duchess and queen, had minds which sought power before all else and security of that power second. All of the rest of life was either an amusement or a means to discover exploitable weaknesses in others.

On a personal level, the Duchess of San was the guest Haldri most enjoyed entertaining. The two women could speak for hours at length with little in terms of fundamental disagreements to come between them.

That was why Haldri trusted the Duchess of San the least of any person present, and that included the bandit who had sworn a life oath to destroy the Paxmer Queen.

Haldri was willing to work with the Duchess of San, but Gallagrin was a pit of scorpions, as her brother Halrek’s fate had proven. Even scorpions could be useful tools when properly employed but careful handling was always required.

“The spectacle comes during the trial and after the interrogation is concluded,” Haldri said. “Our techniques are not for anyone to see, only their results.”

“People see a lot of dead bodies,” Merrin said. “Anyone with the guts to rob a queen isn’t going to let a little thing like a full body mauling slow them down.”

“Those who are found guilty of stealing from the crown of Paxmer or its people are not slain,” Haldri said. “That would be a waste of a perfectly good resource.”

“What do you do with them?” Baron Gedli asked.

“We let them go,” Haldri said. The Duchess of San smiled, understanding the implications of that, but Merrin frowned. The guildmaster was clever enough to see where the queen’s words were leading them but she lacked a frame of reference to judge the impact the queen’s interrogation could have on a subject.

“That doesn’t seem like it would dissuade further banditry,” Baron Gedli said. He was struggling to understand how showing what he assumed to be mercy could stand in for making the hard calls that were required to keep lawlessness in check. Haldri was more than willing to let that misconception stand until Gedli saw the final results of the interrogation.

“Are you not dissuaded?” the queen asked the bandit.

Predictably, the man didn’t answer. His will was unbroken and he had nothing to gain by answering questions the queen posed to him. Or rather he had nothing to gain until she casually traced the glowing poker up the inside of his bare leg.

Haldri didn’t watch the man’s reaction to the pain. It was too predictable. Instead, she glanced at her guests and measured their appetites for tableau before them.

Gedli scowled, his jaw rigid in suppressed empathy with the captive.

Merrin’s gaze by contrast showed only a clinical sort of interest. What was happening held neither profit nor loss for her. The uniqueness of the event lent the act of observing it interest but given enough time that would wane and Haldri guessed that Merrin would find the affair nothing more than dull.

It was Sanli’s attention that surprised the queen though. Haldri had expected the Duchess to be delighted by the occasion. The queen didn’t indulge in torture as a general recreation but when her duties called for it, she’d always found a certain thrill in taking a personal role in meting out her kingdom’s justice. For a moment it struck Haldri as odd that Sanli would disdain corporal punishment, but then the Duchess flashed Haldri a small smile and gestured with her eyes for the queen to continue.

Haldri applied the poker again, and saw another smile light across Sanli’s face. Haldri’s lips parted in appreciative understanding a moment later. Sanli’s frown hadn’t been one of disapproval for the proceedings but rather disapproval of the lazy technique the queen employed.

The man rambled off some pain addled diatribe against Haldri’s reign to which she paid little attention. “You are the true bandit” and other ridiculous claims tumbled out between the man’s screams as though he was hoping to goad the queen into killing him in a rage and ending his misery.

A younger Haldri might have fallen prey to that strategy. Even with more than a decade behind her on the throne, the Haldri who held the poker felt surges of bloodlust tremble down to her fingertips with each word the man spoke. Age brought self control though. What lay in store for the man was far worse than anything Haldri could do even if she was given every tool and toxin she could imagine.

“You are right good Baron,” Haldri said, pausing from her work. “This one’s will is intact. If we release him now, he will grow to be as terrible a thorn in our side as he can manage to be. Worse still, he will inspire others in his revolt.”

“Then you will end him?” Baron Gedli asked.

“No,” Haldri said. “He will depart this chamber alive and free.”

“How can you allow that? Is it because even at his worse he’ll have so little power to affect you and yours?” Gedli asked.

“Only a fool would think that an enemy could never harm them,” Duchess Sanli said. “And the Queen of Paxmer is no fool at all.”

“I’m noticing how big this chamber is,” Merrin said. “Interesting given that I only see one interrogation table in here.”

“You are very observant guildmaster,” Haldri said. “But now we are afraid we must bid you leave. The next stage of the interrogation is not one you would survive observing.”

All three guests were caught off guard by that.

“Exit through the south door,” Haldri said. “One of our retainers will be waiting for you and will see you to our banquet hall.”

“Will you have an appetite after this work?” Gedli asked.

“Of course,” Haldri said. “It will be noontime.”

“And will we see the results of your interrogation?” the Duchess Sanli asked.

“We shall present our findings and release our prisoner following tea,” Haldri said.

From the north end of the great chamber, a deep rumbling of stone on stone arose. That, as much as the queen’s direction, motivated the Gallagrin guests to move towards the south door. All three counted themselves fortunate to reach the safety of the room beyond before the next phase of the interrogation began.

Haldri on the other hand was glad to stay. Her royal duties kept her awash in the problems of the kingdom. She spent nearly every waking hour dealing with her people and their problems. That was right and proper for a queen, but it meant Haldri didn’t get to spend anywhere near as much time as she wanted to with her other half.

“Hello Haldraxan,” Haldri said as a beast of scale, and claw, and fire, and smoke pushed himself into the room. Despite the vast size of the interrogation chamber, Haldraxan’s presence made it feel full to the bursting point.

“Hello Haldri,” the dragon said and lowered his head to be beside her.

Between them there were no titles and no honorifics. Haldri ruled Paxmer’s people. Haldraxan ruled Paxmer’s spirits. Together they ruled its land and wealth and all was as it should be.

“What have we today?” Haldraxan asked.

“A bandit,” Haldri said. “One who has stolen from us.”

“I smell the blood of Paxmer within his veins,” Haldraxan said.

“I know,” Haldri said. “I shall remedy that.”

“You will never make me forswear my country!” the man said.

“We do not need to,” Haldri said. “We are you country and by our judgment we forswear you and yours. You and those descended from you are no more children of Paxmer. We cast you out of our circle. We strip you of name and hearth and home. Though your body may linger here, you spirit is unwelcome and you shall not enjoy the solace or protection of our reign.”

“You use and destroy us at every turn! You offer no protection at all!” the man said.

“You shall discover just how wrong you are about that,” Haldri said.

Haldri watched her dragon focus on the trapped man. She watched the dragon fear roll out like a wave through the bandits flesh.

“What does he have that we wish?” Haldraxan asked over the inhuman screams that filled the gargantuan chamber.

“He and his compatriots stole one of our tax shipments,” Haldri said. “There was gold there. Not much in the grand scheme of things perhaps, but it was our gold.”

The queen and the dragon breathed as one in anticipation of reclaiming their plunder and in their hearts there was a song of joy.

Dae ran her hand down Alari’s back gently tracing the outlines of the queen’s spine. Or at least Dae was being as gentle as she could. With three layers of royal silk already draped over the queen, locating where Alari’s spine lay was proving to be a tricky proposition.

“It’s ok if the over-corset is off center,” Alari said. “I only have meetings with the Wagoneers Guild and the Corsi Shipping Syndicate today.”

“You are speaking to an ex-handmaiden, Your Majesty,” Dae said. “We take the job of making you look your best rather seriously.”

Threading up the garment with one hand was a skill Dae had perfected years prior but, as with any skill, lack of practice blunted the edge of perfection a great deal.

“Adae, my dearest and most infuriating, if I wanted to look my best I would have assembled the small army which is usually required to engineer the royal regalia,” Alari said. Despite her complaints, Alari held still, arms reaching towards the ceiling to allow Dae the freedom to adjust the fourth and fifth layers of the queenly garb which Alari was being buried under.

“Are you casting aspersions on my training Your Majesty?” Dae asked. “Training which I will remind you, that you, yourself insisted I be subjected to?”

“It was convenient at the time,” Alari said. “We got to avoid hours of boring meetings and hours of even less pleasant balls, which you can’t tell me you were ungrateful for.”

“I recall being grateful then, yes,” Dae said. “Just as I’m grateful now.”

“So this is revenge?” Alari asked, turning to face Dae as Dae swiveled her around to work on the lacing that ran along Alari’s waist.

“Yes,” Dae said. “Revenge for you allowing yourself to be thrown out a window.”

“And yet, strangely, this is leaving me with the impulse to repeat that trip,” Alari said.

“You are welcome to try,” Dae said. “I would point out though that I have enough lace and ribbon here that I am reasonably certain I could mummify you before you reached the sill.”

“If this goes on much longer I may be inclined to take my chances,” Alari said.

“You’re grumpy when your discomforted, my liege,” Dae said. “Could it be that your wounds still bother you more than you claim?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Alari said. “I am fully mended.”

Dae pulled the laced wrapping cord at the queen’s waist tight and her a squeak of pain escape Alari’s lips. With a triumphant smirk, Dae release the cord by a few inches.

“Fully mended I see,” Dae said, meeting Alari’s disapproving glare with a challenging gaze.

“Mended fully enough that I needn’t rest any further,” Alari said altering her claim in the face of Dae’s implied threat to tighten the waist cord again.

“And the Royal Chirurgeon agreed with that assessment did she?” Dae asked.

“She did not gainsay it,” Alari said, unwilling to meet Dae’s gaze.

“My Queen, my beloved Majesty,” Dae said. “I am sworn to protect you from all threats. Please remember that oath applies even, and most especially, when you are a danger to yourself.”

Dae straightened the last of the ribbons around Alari’s neck ruff and stepped back to judge whether any more adjustments were needed. Alari was right that the process would have been faster with the usual squadron of handmaidens who were responsible for dressing the queen. During Alari’s long convalescence though she’d been loathe to allow anyone except Dae to see the full extent of the wounds that Halrek’s betrayal had inflicted.

“I appreciate that my Adae,” Alari said. “But the quiet of winter is already beginning to thaw to a boisterous spring. As tempting as lounging in the royal bed is, there are wheels that must be set in motion before we are run down by history.”

“Paxmer has answered?” Dae asked, picking up the queen’s favorite brush and indicating for Alari to sit so that Dae could begin work the royal tresses.

“Not as yet,” Alari said. “And while that alone is enough to send a clear signal as to their intentions, we must be ready to respond once they take an overt course.”

“And the meetings today with the transport guilds?” Dae asked, sitting behind Alari and taking up a handful of her hair.

“Our royal court will see it as my returning to direct and active rule rather than acting through proxies as I’ve done for these last four months,” Alari said.

“The transport guilds may not be happy about that,” Dae said. “Your proxies have been more accommodating than you were from the accounts I’ve eavesdropped on.”

“That was at my urging,” Alari said. “The plot against me didn’t get as far as it did without a solid base of support from my nobles. I’m not ready to move against them yet, and I haven’t sifted those who claim to support me from those who actually do.”

“Telli was a great loss wasn’t he?” Dae asked, brushing the tangled ends of Alari’s hair out into smooth waves.

“He was an early supporter,” Alari said. “And he brought a solid contingent of the realm’s nobility with him when he joined my side of the war against my father.”

“Were they all following him, or did his presence give the undecided the courage to back you personally?” Dae asked.

“I suspect I will only know that for certain if I discover one of their daggers in my back,” Alari said.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll be left to wonder about them forever,” Dae said. “Or at least as long as I’m on the job.”

“Even you must sleep though my Knight,” Alari said.

“Which is why you’re allowing me to create the Queen’s Guard,” Dae said.

“Against my better judgment,” Alari said. “With Gallagrin uncontested once more, there is no one who can protect me better than myself.”

“And yet you still named me as your Knight,” Dae said.

“I am a selfish creature,” Alari said. “It was that or you were going to leave for Nath again.”

“I go only where you direct me,” Dae said, putting down the brush and gathering up three strips of Alari’s hair.

“So long as you are beside me, I need no other guardians,” Alari said.

“If you are attacked again, it won’t be by poison and it won’t be by a few assassins,” Dae said and began braiding the queen’s hair. “The next strike against your life will be backed by overwhelming force. After what we did to Telli and the Paxmer prince, the price of failure is too clear. Anyone who attempts to oust you will make sure they have a completely decisive advantage to put in play.“

“Then why place innocent men and women in the path of destruction like that?” Alari asked.

“To raise the level on what will count as a completely decisive advantage,” Dae said. “Ideally I won’t need to protect you from any attacks because I’ll be able to convince people to not attack you in the first place.”

“And how is the search for those extra protectors going?” Alari asked.

Dae finished off the first thin braid and gathered up three strips of hair from the other side of Alari’s head to start the next.

“Not as well as I’d hoped,” Dae said.

“The applicants for a position in the Royal Guard failed their test?” Alari asked.

“Not for a position in the Royal Guard,” Dae said. “Kemoral was happy with what he saw.”

“But you were not,” Alari said, seeing the shape of Dae’s thoughts in nothing more than her words and the tone she spoke them in.

“They were miserable,” Dae said. “One simple physical challenge and they met it with nothing except complaints. They didn’t display the first instinct towards teamwork or any signs of creative thought. I gave them simple rules and they met the challenge without ever testing the boundaries of what they’d been told.”

“Some people do follow instructions better than you do,” Alari said. “That’s not technically a sin you know.”

“I am aware,” Dae said. “I am also aware that a talent for following orders unthinkingly may make them excellent material for the Royal Guard, but your protectors are going to need to be able to see things coming from unexpected angles and react accordingly. Ideally I want people who have that capacity but who don’t think like me.”

“You don’t want them to share your blindspots,” Alari said

“Exactly,” Dae said. “I only have two eyes, I want a hundred watching out for you, in all directions, at every hour.”

“I feel quite safe when your eyes are with me,” Alari said.

“I find that comforting too,” Dae said and then sighed as memory overwhelmed her. “Six years. Six foolish years.”

“If not for those years, we would not be here today,” Alari said. “I regret every wasted moment of them, but I do not regret the today which they led us to.”

“You are wise, my Queen,” Dae said, a warmth blossoming in her chest. “I do not regret our today or our tomorrows either.”

For a moment the queen and her knight, enjoyed a satisfied silence covered by the familiar ritual of hair braiding. Whatever training the queen’s handmaidens received, none of them ever quite mastered the simple act of weaving Alari’s hair the way that Dae had.

For the palace personnel, it was a task which required skill and technical proficiency so that they wouldn’t draw the hair too tight or craft the slim braids with one of the strands being too large or too small.

For Dae it was more than a skill though. It was a form of communion. She didn’t simple weaving Alari’s hair. She spoke to her princess with each layered crossing and her princess responded in kind.

As always the process took less time than Dae would have preferred but as much as she dared claim for it. In the end, Alari looked wonderful, though to Dae’s eyes that had little to do with the preparation of the royal regalia or the careful design of the queen’s hair but rather everything to do with Alari herself.

When Dae met Alari, she had been impressed with the princess’ poise and presence. The child Alari possessed only a small fraction of the force of personality she developed as she grew into her role as queen though. If Dae looked for it, she could catch a glimpse of the girl she first met lingering within the queen, but the years had both given and taken so much that the woman who was the queen was as much an exciting mystery to Dae as the princess had ever been.

“There was one candidate who looked promising though,” Dae said, jumping back to an earlier point in their conversation to take her mind off how intense it was to be with her princess again.

“I thought no one passed your test?” Alari asked.

“No one bested the mountain,” Dae said. “Or me. But there was one who displayed the kind of thinking and perseverance I was looking for.”

“What did they do?” Alari asked.

“I asked them to climb the mountain in a storm without their pact spirit’s help,” Dae said. “The one who impressed me was at the back of the pack and wasn’t going to make it on her own, and none of the other idiots thought to help her.”

“Were you trying to kill my applicants?” Alari asked.

“No, no,” Dae said. “I just wanted to break them in a somewhat specific manner.”

“And how did this one break?” Alari asked.

“She jumped off the mountain,” Dae said. “And flew down to the base camp we’d setup.”

“So she cheated?” Alari asked.

“Yes, but she did it right,” Dae said. “I’d told them they couldn’t use their pacts to climb up the mountain. She only used hers to get back to safety and then as soon as the storm was over she started climbing up again, without her pact spirit’s help, as instructed. The rest of us were coming down the mountain by then, so I had her turn back but I want to see her again. There might be something I can work with there.”

“Good,” Alari said. “That’s excellent. Then perhaps you’ll wind up with two candidates for the Queen’s Guard.”

“Two?” Dae asked. “Who’s the other?”

“The Duchess of Tel has agreed to pay us a visit at last,” Alari said.

“Duke Telli’s daughter is coming here?” Dae asked. “I thought Ren said, she was sickly and couldn’t move till the spring.”

“He didn’t use the word sickly,” Alari said. “He claimed she was beset by a troubled spirit and needed to address that before she could withstand the trip from Elinspire.”

“What does that mean?” Dae asked.

“I don’t know,” Alari said. “It might be that her period of mourning her father has passed and she feels ready enough to confront his killer.”

“Why would you think that?” Dae asked.

“Because she claims she doesn’t care for the title of Duchess,” Alari said. “And that she is coming here because her dearest wish is to meet you.”

Below Dae, a chasm twelve hundred feet deep waited like a demon hungry for offerings to fall into its maw. Above her, the mountain called Heaven’s Pillar, Tola-Veyne, soared into a sea of heavy cloud cover. A storm gathered above the summit, building winds and rain, sleet and hail, to scour the foolish and the unwary from the craggy rock face and send them plummeting to their demise far below.

“The air’s gone still,” Dae said, shouting to the dozen of climbers around her, “We’ve got ten minutes, at the most, until the skies break open and washes everybody here away.”

“We can’t get off the mountain in ten minutes,” Kemoral said, his irritation matched only by the unkind mirth it brought to Dae’s heart.

Sir Faen Kemoral was the Senior Commander of the Gallagrin Royal Guard. As such he outranked the commanders and generals of any noble’s house forces, even though the troops he commanded were far fewer in number. Unlike many in the royal capital, Sir Kemoral could also boast of having direct and immediate access to the Queen. His concerns were those of the realm, and therefore her concerns as well. When he spoke, people had good reason to listen.

Despite that, Kemoral was not an attention seeker. He was able to boast of his importance but he rarely, if ever, did. He rarely, if ever, needed to. His face and heraldry were well known, both in High Crest and in the various barracks and military stations which he had cause to visit. He enjoyed an inherent deference from those he interacted with and was careful not to overplay the demands he put on those beneath him in the social order. It was a lesson he’d learned from observing the previous ruler of Gallagrin, King Sathe, the Butcher.

Sathe’s reign had been one of constant fear and humiliation for those around him. Sathe always pushed over the boundaries of tolerable behavior when dealing with those beneath him. It was a tool the tyrant used to keep his underlings beaten, and broken, so that fear would sap away any thoughts of rebellion.

Kemoral hadn’t been the commander of the Royal Guard then, but he’d been high enough in the ranks to see the kind of impact that behavior had on people. In an atmosphere of terror, no one could act efficiently, no one had the drive to do better than what was demanded of them, and no one was willing to say when something was wrong and a better solution existed to a problem.

On those points, he and Dae were in complete agreement, as they were on many other points as well. Despite being largely compatible in their views though, the Senior Commander of the Royal Guard and the Queen’s Knight differed on enough of the “smaller” details that each found the other decidedly antagonistic.

“There’s one path that’ll take you off the mountain in less than ten minutes,” Dae said, looking downwards.

“What should we do then Lady Akorli?” one of the Royal Guard candidates asked, glancing over towards her.

Spread across the mountain face, a dozen of the most promising Pact Warriors of the new year clung to the rock with all of the strength and tenacity they could muster.

“This is part of the test,” Dae said, using Kirios, her Pact Spirit, to amplify her voice. “Your goal is to survive. That’s it. There’s cave entrance a hundred feet above us. That’ll protect you from the storm if you can make it there in time.”

“This test is insane,” Kemoral said, whispering so that only Dae could hear him.

“I thought we agreed,” Dae whispered back and she hoisted herself up to a new set of handholds. “The Queen’s Guard is going to have only the best.”

“You ask too much of them,” Kemoral said, grimacing with the strain of pulling himself up the mountain at Dae’s speed.

“I need to know where they’re going to give up,” Dae said. “We can’t afford to induct quitters into the Queen’s Guard. Not after the problems you’ve been having since Halrek lost his head.”

Kemoral lost his grip as he reached for a new spot, but was able to stay on the sheer wall with one hand and both feet braced properly.

“He didn’t lose it, it was taken from him,” Kemoral said. “A move that, however well justified it was, we are still paying for.”

“You lost over half of the Guard,” Dae said. “Think what that means in terms of how many of them would have betrayed you and the Queen if Halrek hadn’t been stopped?”

“There are many threats to our Queen and Country,” Kemoral said. “In neutralizing one, you exposed her more openly to the others.”

“Given that the threat I neutralized thought he’d successfully killed the Queen, and that he managed to divert the blame for that onto someone else, I don’t think there was ever going to be a path that didn’t expose her to some other perils,” Dae said as she found a pair of solid handholds that brought her another six feet up the cliff.

“You certainly don’t shy away from perils,” Kemoral said, trying and then abandoning three grippable spots before settling on a traversable path upwards.

“I don’t often have the chance to,” Dae said.

“This is ridiculous!” one of the other recruits yelled. “We could have climbed to the top  by now if we could use our Pact spirits!”

“I already told you the rules,” Dae said to them all. “No using your Pact transformations to climb up the mountain.”

“I don’t see the point in this,” Kemoral said. “There’s not a noble son or daughter who applies to the Guard who doesn’t have a strong Pact Spirit bound to them already. What purpose does it serve to torture their bodies like this?”

“You bought your commission, didn’t you?” Dae asked.

“Duke Morli, my grandfather, did,” Kemoral said without self consciousness.

While anyone in Gallagrin could enlist under the banner of their local Duke, those who wished for a position as an officer had to purchase that commission. For command ranks in the individual noble armies, the prices were set by the Noble families in question. Commissions in the Royal Guard were given by the King or Queen and required far greater sums than in a provincial army. Dae’s commission when she had been awarded command of Star’s Watch had come with a cost, despite the fact that the Queen (then Princess) had ordered it of her. Alari had provided the funds from her war chest to, which in turn had paid the salaries of the officers who served under Dae at the time. It was a complicated system, rife with possibility for corruption, but somehow people made it work anyways, though it often left those in charge with little experience directly managing the troops. That task was given to those who’d earned their position the hard way.

“This isn’t a test of their bodies,” Dae whispered. “I want to see what they’re spirits look like.”

“You will push them to their deaths to see in their ghosts what they might have been,” Kemoral said. “That’s brilliant. Simply brilliant.”

The cave mouth was still roughly fifty feet above them as the first, precursor drops of rain began to fall.

Dae looked over the small team that she’d assembled. They were a miserable looking lot. Most were paler cast than Dae from having spent the greater portion of their lives indoors. That sort of lifestyle, even for those who had put in some time training for their Entrance Trials, was showing through in the candidates by the panting and cursing and general displeasure at the activity required of them.

A part of Dae felt sorry noble young men and women, even as she devised still harder challenges to throw against them. The poor children around her, just barely into their adulthood, had come to the Royal Guard Entrance Trials expecting to be judged on their inherited worth. Each bore a Pact Spirit which had served the noble family they belonged to for generations and was therefore quite powerful regardless of how adept the applicant was with the Pact Bond.

In other years, it had taken little more than a willingness to pledge themselves to the crown’s service and a demonstration to show the capabilities of their Pact Spirit, for a candidate to secure a place on the Guard’s roster. Noble sons and daughters were not in such great abundance that the Royal Guard could afford to turn too many away.

With Halrek’s death and the shifting political landscape which followed it though, an unfortunate number of noble families found excuses to call their scions back from the pledge of service to the Royal Court.

That happened at the same time as Dae was trying to piece together a special team dedicated solely to the Queen’s well being. Her goal had been to skim the cream of the crop from the Royal Guide and forge an elite unit, but with the crumbling of the Guard’s membership rolls, there wasn’t enough “cream” left to skim off anymore.

That is what lead Dae to the challenge of clinging to a mountain side as one of the early storms of spring, or late storms of winter, descended upon her. If the Royal Guard couldn’t supply the personnel that she needed, her next best option was to train them herself, and the first step in that formula was to find people whom she could actually train.

There were a lot of elements that went into the analysis of each candidate though, from the ability to listen, to the ability to set aside their egos and give up being the most important and special of all children just because of what they’d been born with. Dae wanted to see creativity, and passion, and attentiveness in them but most of all she wanted the Queen’s Guard to be effective and agreeable to Alari.

Dae knew her Queen. If Alari didn’t feel her special guards could save both themselves and her, she wouldn’t allow them to risk their lives in her defense, and if she simply didn’t like them, she’d refuse their service even if she was in peril.

There was a real chance that the climbers might wash off the mountain but it wasn’t going to be because they fell. Alari and Kemoral were fast enough to catch anyone who pitched off into the abyss below them. Even if everyone made it to the cave though, Dae wasn’t certain that any of them were going to survive the mountain in terms of making it onto the Queen’s Guard.

In all likelihood, after the testing, Dae would pass on them and Kemoral would take them into the Royal Guard instead. Those who had made it to the mountain had at least the prowess to serve in that capacity, and Kemoral was desperate for bodies to refill his diminished ranks.

Dae glanced around, inspecting the candidates climbing above her. Most were grumbling openly. Several were whispering insults that they either didn’t know or didn’t care that she could hear. And then there was one, a young girl, likely just turned eighteen, who had stopped climbing altogether.

The girl’s eyes were closed and her head was tipped to the side as though she was considering something or having an internal conversation. She opened her eyes and measured the distance to the cave mouth with her gaze. Of all the climbers she was the slowest and from the looks of things, the one least likely to make the entrance in time. From her expression, Dae could see that the girl was aware of this too.

Dae frowned. If she let the girl climb a little further, she could catch up to her before the storm hit and help the girl into the cave before real danger struck. There were a couple of others who were likely to be in need of that kind of aid as well, but Kemoral was already moving towards one of them and the other transformed his hands into clawed Pact Armor gauntlets to aid in his ascent.

The girl saw this too and her frown matched Dae’s. Despite being in last place, she apparently wasn’t going to cheat.

Dae started moving towards her, but Jyl, the young girl, had other ideas and reached her decision before Dae got within twenty feet of her.

With her frown changing to a frightened smile, Jyl let go.

For a long fraction of a second she was poised, precariously standing on her footholds on the cliff’s face as gravity slowly pulled her off balance and into the chasm.

Dae readied her transformation, wings and power surging into her mind’s eye, but before the fateful second was up she paused and held herself back.

Jyl wasn’t falling to her doom.

She was gliding.

Before she’d dropped more than dozen feet, wide, gossamer wings spread from the young girl’s back carrying her softly downwards, and if not away from the storm then at least to a safer, more secure camp to wait it out in.

It wasn’t how Dae had suggested that the challenge before them should be met, but it was within the rules that she’d laid out for the candidates. Depending on what Jyl did once the storm was passed, Dae though she might have found one candidate who could qualify for the Queen’s Guard after all.